Citing an undue hardship on the department, Palm Beach Fire-Rescue is asking the U.S. Marines to release firefighter Lt. Rob Locy from active duty, reports the Palm Beach Daily News.
The absence of Locy, a gunnery sergeant, has forced other employees to take on extra work and has strained the department with an “excessive amount of overtime costs,” Deputy Fire Chief Darrel Donatto wrote in a memo to the town’s assistant director of human resources.
Locy, who was the department’s Firefighter of the Year in 2008, has been deployed since Jan. 1, 2011, and has been on continuous active duty since Nov. 1, 2011, serving stateside. In July, the town received military orders that Locy will be deployed through Sept. 30, 2014.
Fire-Rescue has paid 2,424 hours of overtime to cover Locy’s vacancy, the memo said. It does not provide the monetary cost for those hours.
Donatto estimated the cost at about $90,000 based on an average hourly overtime rate of $38.01. He said he couldn’t provide an “actual cost” because it would have to be calculated based on the salary of each person who covered each of the 101 24-four hour overtime shifts.
Read more of the story here http://tinyurl.com/pw7d8v4
Palm Beach (FL) Requests Firefighter Released from Active Military Duty
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